Smaller Share of Students Finish College in Four Years

For high school students who graduated in 1972 and who eventually received a college baccalaureate, 58% got their degree within four years, according to data analyzed by economists John Bound at the University of Michigan, Michael Lovenheim at Cornell University and Sarah Turner. In contrast, just 44% of eventual BA recipients who graduated from high school in 1992 finished their college degree “on time.”

But why? One explanation could be that students were less prepared for college than in the past. But math test scores and parent education levels suggest that college-bound high school graduates were actually more prepared for college in 1992 than twenty years earlier.

Instead, the economists find evidence that the increase in time to graduate is a matter of resources.

Much of the increase in time-to-degree happened at public schools that weren’t in the top tier (such as community colleges or whatever public university the public university you went to played against). Those are schools that couldn’t ration how many students attended them, and so saw student-faculty ratios rise as enrollment increased and budgets got strained.

Meantime, student budgets got strained by rising tuition costs, forcing more of them to spend more time working, and less time studying. Between 1972 and 1992, the average amount of time college students aged 18 to 21 spent working went from 9.5 to 12.4 hours a week. (As of 2005, that figure had risen to 13.5 hours.)

“[O]ur analysis also indicates that reducing students’ financial burdens while enrolled in college would help to reduce time to degree,” write the economists. That matters because the less time students spend getting a college degree, the quicker they’re using that degree in the workforce.